Long Weekend Travels - Part Two

I am quickly approaching the end of my away elective, and I've accumulated a large number of photos I want to share, so I thought I'd finish up my story of the Victoria Day Long Weekend instead of going for a run in the miserable heat.  (I miss home where the temperature is less than 30 C and the humidity is measured using only two digits.)

Starting from where I left off, after arriving back at the bed and breakfast from the vineyard tour on Sunday evening, I decided to make an evening trip to Niagara Falls so as to leave more time on Monday for other things.  It was a wise decision indeed, as making my way through the traffic/finding parking/walking to the falls from my distant parking spot took much longer than I had anticipated.  While the falls themselves are spectacular and absolutely worth seeing, the city of Niagara Falls is a horrible place for anyone like me who hates crowds and chaos.  Cars, children, street vendors, tacky souvenirs - all of the things that I abhor about tourist traps.

But these were pretty (recycled photo from previous post, as all of my Niagara Falls pics look exactly the same):

These were pretty too (American falls):

It is really impossible to grasp the enormity of the falls from still pictures.  Standing at the mouth of the falls, virtually all you can hear is the sound of the water cascading over the side.  I experienced a bit of panic just looking at it.

I found the following sign kinda funny, because really - do people need to be told not to climb over the railing at Niagara Falls?

Of course, the very next day someone tried to commit suicide by jumping over the side...

Anyway...on to happier thoughts.  My visit to Niagara Falls marked the end of a long day, and I was very happy to make my way through the traffic back to the bed and breakfast to sleep.  The next morning, I had my second lovely breakfast that I didn't have to make for myself, and then I headed out to explore Niagara-On-The-Lake.  It's a really beautiful village filled with historical homes and beautiful gardens, but for some reason I went shopping instead of photographing much of it.  Here are some of the few pics I did take.

One place where I did take a lot of pictures was the Apothecary Museum, which was my last stop in Niagara-On-The-Lake.  The descriptions were not nearly as informative or well-developed as those at the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, but the displays were interesting enough to make it worthwhile

After the museum tour, I headed back to my home base, stopping on the way to visit an old friend whom I hadn't seen in eleven years.  She has two adorable kids, one of whom (the five-year-old) was very suspicious of the strange person in her house, and the other of whom (the two-year-old) fell in love with me after only a few minutes of playing with Play-Doh with her.  Apparently for days afterwards she kept asking "Momma?  When is that girly friend of yours going to come play with me again?"

It was a lovely, lovely weekend.

Room for One

In re-reading my previous post, I realize that it was a bit harsh, and I really hope that I didn't offend anyone with it.  It was my late-night attempt to purge some unhappy thoughts from my mind so that I could fall asleep, rather than stare at the ceiling reliving a day of sad brain tumour cases.  It was really not intended to be disrespectful of anyone else's beliefs, no matter how different from my own they may be.

Now that that's out of the way, it brings me to my current situation, which is nestled into a cheap motel in the Georgian Bay, anticipating a day filled with steep cliffs and falling water.  As I've been traveling these last few weeks, I've noticed once again that I seem to be the only person around who is traveling by herself.  The only person renting a hotel room solo, the only person sitting alone in restaurants, the only person hiking trails alone while hoping not to get eaten by a bear/attacked by a rapist/hopelessly lost a la Blaire Witch Project.  And it leaves me wondering if other single people simply don't travel, or if they always find a friend/sibling/parent with whom to travel.  Or if maybe their numbers are just so small that they get lost amongst the seemingly endless crowds of smiley happy couples.

For all of the solo people out there, including those who are in relationships but sometimes find themselves apart from their significant other, what do you do about travel?  Do you ever travel alone, and if so, do you feel as much of an anomaly as I sometimes do?

Moments of Doubt

Despite having recently declared myself an atheist, there are still moments that leave me questioning whether there may in fact be a god.

On Thursday morning, as I sat in my hotel room eating Mini Wheats before work, I read a blog post about sunrises written by a missionary and physician in Uganda.  It spoke of how each sunrise is unique, the work of an artist, and about how this is evidence for the existence of god.  While I appreciated the point about the beauty of sunrises, I dismissed the idea that there was a higher power behind them.  In my typical atheist fashion, I credited their existence to physics rather than divinity, an interaction between waves of light and the Earth's atmosphere.  Something easily explained by science and book learning.

And then, less than an hour later, as I walked through the hospital on my way to early morning tumour board, a set of paintings that I had passed by daily but never before noticed caught my attention.  The subject?  Sunrises.  A whole series of them, all from the same vantage point, painted to illustrate the uniqueness and beauty of each sunrise.  While my rational mind attributed this to coincidence, the deeper and more mysterious parts of my mind couldn't help but flash to the thought that maybe this was something more, a sign perhaps.

A small part of me held on to that idea for a few more hours, until my first new consult of the day.  As I read through the patient's chart, reviewing yet another story of another previously healthy person who was found to have an incurable and rapidly fatal tumour, I was reminded of why I lost any shred of belief that I ever had.  While I would love to be a person of faith, to believe in something greater than me that is compassionate and kind, I still can't reconcile that concept with the patients I see in front of me.  I can't grasp how a being that is supposedly all-powerful would afflict people with such horrible diseases and then provide them with only fallible human beings such as myself to fight them.  While I commend people of faith for being able to believe in spite of this, the cognitive dissonance is simply too much for me to handle.

So despite brief glimpses of something bigger, I continue to cling to my non-belief.  My belief that all of this is random, that cancer is just an unlucky ticket in the great cosmic lottery, is the only thing that allows me to do my work without being in a constant state of rage.

Long Weekend Travels - Part One

I keep trying to write an interesting and insightful post about my trip last weekend, but there really isn't much to say.  I traveled through Southern Ontario, I saw some pretty things, I drank some good wine - that pretty much sums it all up.  So instead of struggling unsuccessfully to write something profound about the experience, here are pictures!  (And a few words by way of explanation)

On Saturday, I visited the St. Jacobs' Farmers' Market, which is apparently the largest in Canada.  I had visited it years ago while I was at a geek camp nearby, and I've always wanted to go back.  Not sure it was worth driving an hour out of my way and then getting lost in Kingston, but it was fun to see regardless.  Many of the stands are operated by old order Mennonites, who still use horse and buggy to bring their goods to the market.

While there, in addition to drooling over the maple syrup and devouring the tastiest brisket I've ever had in my life, I took a horse-drawn carriage tour of a nearby Mennonite farm.  The family that owns the farm lives according to old order traditions, meaning no television, no radio, no internet, and no cars.  I can hardly imagine!

After visiting St. Jacob, I headed on to Niagara-On-The-Lake, where I spent my evening on a ghost tour.  Sadly, there are no pictures, and there were no ghosts sighted.

The next day, I had a leisurely breakfast made by one of the owners of the bed and breakfast, which made me really miss having access to a kitchen.  Mini Wheats just can't compare to baked eggs and homemade muffins.  Once again, there are no pictures, as I was already feeling awkward as the one single person at the table, and didn't want to add to my awkwardness by pulling out my camera.

After breakfast, I headed out on a winery tour.  I had originally planned to do a bike tour of the wineries, but after realizing that 1) it was ridiculously hot and humid in Southern Ontario and 2) I start having balance problems after half a glass of wine, I opted to do a van tour instead.  Very wise, I think.  We visited five different vineyards and sampled some truly amazing wine. 

I may have spent a ridiculous amount of money on a tiny bottle of ice wine from a really amazing independent winery that only sells wine from its own store.  It's one of my birthday presents to myself.

In addition to sampling the wine, we got to tour one of the vineyards.

I had visions of photographing bunches of grapes weighing down the vines, but unfortunately when I visited the grapes looked like this:

We also got to see the inside of the winery.  Where the magic happens!

It was a very lovely day, and I look forward to remembering it next weekend as I enjoy my winery purchases with friends and/or family.  Or just my cats if no one is around.

Mild Panic

I thought I had my elective for the month of August worked out, with 2.5 weeks of hepatology tentatively booked and 1.5 weeks of palliative care definitely booked (despite sending an email to the palliative care program director entitled "Visiting Elective in Hepatology").  Unfortunately, I just received an email indicating that the hepatology portion isn't going to work.  Gaaaah.

I really don't know what to do.  I can try to switch my ICU rotation from September to August to enable me to do a hepatology elective in September, but that would mean that I would be doing an elective in hepatology after my fellowship applications are due.  I can try to scramble to find a hepatology elective at another school for August, but that's cutting it really close, and I don't know if I'd be able to find anything.  I can do one week of hepatology and three weeks of palliative care (still an option at the school to which I had originally applied), but I don't think it would provide me with enough exposure to hepatology to help with my decision-making process.

I really wish that my decision about fellowship wasn't so hard.  When I left for my current elective, my hope was that I would either fall madly in love with oncology or passionately hate it, such that my decision would be easy.  Neither has happened.  I'm enjoying my time in oncology and could see myself doing it for the rest of my career, but I don't feel driven or compelled to make it my life's work.  I can still see myself leaving it behind for another career path without pining over it forever.  But I don't know how I'm going to feel about hepatology if and when I actually manage to find a rotation in it.

Why, oh why, didn't I try to start figuring this out earlier instead of leaving it for two months before the fellowship application process starts?